The controversy surrounding the parts and pieces taken from the Penske Racing teams at Texas Motor Speedway Saturday elicits more questions than answers at the moment, including what kind of penalties might come down.

The first big question is if the rear-end housing and other parts, which were taken by NASCAR just hours before the race, broke the rules or merely manipulated a gray area in the rulebook where NASCAR didn’t want the teams to go.

Then there are the questions of who possibly turned in the Penske teams and whether Brad Keselowski’s comments last year about Hendrick Motorsports had anything to do with his team suddenly coming under intense scrutiny.

Keselowski didn’t complain about Hendrick teams skewing the rear end of their cars last year, but made note of it when asked about the differences in their cars.

“There’s parts and pieces on the car that are moving after inspection that makes the cars more competitive,” Keselowski said after the August race at Michigan. “Some guys have it, some don’t. There’s a question as to the interpretation of the rule.

“Penske Racing errs on the safe side because we don’t want to be the guys that get the big penalty.”

While Keselowski emphasized that he wasn’t signaling out the Hendrick teams, it was perceived that way.

NASCAR made a rule change during the year to limit some of the ingenuity in the rear of the car and then this year changed many of the rear suspension rules. It could almost be argued that Keselowski — who beat Hendrick’s Jimmie Johnson for the 2012 Cup title — had lobbied for such rules and won.

Now, apparently, the Penske teams tried something NASCAR didn’t like in the same area that was such a focus last year. All NASCAR Vice President of Competition Robin Pemberton would say Saturday was that the parts and pieces taken were outside the spirit of the rules.

Penske competition director Travis Geisler and team owner Roger Penske both indicated that teams try things for performance and they expect NASCAR to take parts they don’t like. They obviously were concerned about possible penalties but not totally surprised. Part of the business, it seemed, as they talked Saturday night at Texas.

Keselowski, though, reacted much differently, indicating that he felt his team had been targeted. And he might have a point as the pieces were taken less than two hours before the race, leaving the Penske teams scrambling to make changes and get through inspection.

It is difficult to think that the team changed something in the rear end housing that wasn’t already on the car at the start of the weekend, hoping to get it through race-day inspection.

It’s much better for a team to know if it has to change something on Friday and not risk being late to the starting grid, as the Penske teams nearly were at Texas.

Or was NASCAR tipped off on Friday and made the call to take a closer look Saturday afternoon? If it was tipped off, why didn’t NASCAR go check it earlier in the day?

And of course, who did the tipping and pointed the finger at Keselowski and Penske?

It would be easy draw conclusions based on the background from last year. Johnson’s Hendrick car was next to Keselowski’s in the garage at Texas. Jeff Gordon’s Hendrick car was parked next to Penske driver Joey Logano. That’s two Hendrick teams that had the best look at anything fishy on the Penske vehicles.

If Penske teams were doing anything suspect, it had to be so way out of the box that teams either went to NASCAR to report them or at least asked NASCAR officials if what Penske appeared to be doing was legal.

The extra scrutiny from NASCAR — including a pit-road penalty for not being inside his pit box during at stop at Martinsville — had to frustrate Keselowski, who had publicly indicated that he wanted his team to take more chances in the innovation department.

Hendrick Motorsports hasn’t always been successful with its innovations, but it did win a battle with NASCAR over one issue last year.

NASCAR took the C-posts from Johnson’s car prior to Daytona 500 qualifying in 2012.

NASCAR issued a six-week suspension to crew chief Chad Knaus and 25-point penalties, all of which were later overturned when Hendrick appealed.

If this is the same theme — illegal in spirit but not so well defined by the written word — it’s unlikely that NASCAR would go easy on the Penske teams.

Penske must hope that’s the case. Because NASCAR historically doesn’t look too kindly when teams do things that it has just created rules to prevent.